The Elephanta Suite

  "I seem to recall it," Audie said, but he thought: Which version?

  Beth was only half listening. She could feel the tension of the town in her body like a cramp; she could smell it and taste it. It was dreadful and disorderly, yet she was roused by its truth, as the revelation of something that had lain hidden from her but was hidden no longer—no one hiding, no one groveling, the sight of smoke and fire and open conflict. She was shocked and excited by it. It was India with the gilt scraped off, hungry India, the India of struggle, India at odds with itself. She had seen Indians at Agni, but they didn't live there. This was where Indians lived, in the smoke and flames of Hanuman Nagar.

  "I was devastated," Dr. Nagaraj said. He was still talking about his friend, dead among the elephants. "I could not stop sobbing at his funeral."

  They had come to the shop. Beth could see the stack of shatooshes on the counter, the welcoming shopkeeper pushing people aside so that they could alight. They entered the shop and were shown to plastic chairs. The shopkeeper then pulled a wooden shutter, as though to conceal the transaction. With some ceremony he unfolded a shatoosh and presented it to Beth to admire. Before she could register her pleasure, he gave her another one.

  "His grandmother took me aside. She said, 'Do you know the story of Vishnu, who rode on the great bird Garuda to the House of the Gods?'"

  "Feel. It is chiru," the shatoosh seller was saying, unfolding one piece after another and draping some of them on the counter and thrusting others into Beth's hands.

  "As Vishnu and Garuda entered the House of the Gods they saw a small bird at the gateway. The Lord of Death also entered, and he smiled at the little bird. Garuda was so shocked at this he seized the little bird in his beak and took him fifty kilometers away, to save him from the Lord of Death. And by the way," Dr. Nagaraj said, "these are first-quality shatoosh. Made from chin hairs of very rare Tibetan antelope. Woven in Kashmir. This man is Kashmiri himself."

  Audie said, "Is that the end of the story? The little bird was saved, right?"

  In their experience Dr. Nagaraj never said yes or no. He considered Audie's question and said, "When ultimately they left the House of the Gods, Vishnu said, 'Where is the little bird?'"

  Beth turned to him and saw that he had kicked off his sandals, that though he was still speaking, he was admiring the stacks of unfolded shatooshes. He had turned his back on the Blundens, yet speaking into the shadows of the shop, where a naked child was slapping the tiles with a plastic drinking cup, he sounded more composed and oracular.

  "Before Garuda could reply, Lord of Death said, 'I smiled to see little bird here, because he was supposed to be fifty kilometers away, to meet his death.'"

  Hearing this, Beth was stricken, as if Dr. Nagaraj had pinched her, and without thinking she said, "We must be going." She was overcome by the mustiness of the shop, the incense that seemed a mingling of perfume and cowshit, the imploring shatoosh seller—the illegality of what he was doing—and within earshot the yells of the men at the shrine, the smell of its smoky fires. She picked up two scarves and said, "I'll take these two."

  "I told him you are not tourists, you are yatris yourselves, doing puja at Agni."

  "That's us," Audie said.

  "I will deal with money. You know it is some thousands of dollars?" Dr. Nagaraj said. "You can pay me later. I will find you in the car."

  They made their way to the car through the crowd that had gathered at the shop to gape at them. Dr. Nagaraj got into the front seat, and they were soon driving back down the main street of the cracked and littered town. It was a whole town, spread as though broken and scattered on the side of Monkey Hill, out of sight of Agni. Dirty, busy, poorly lit shops selling shoes and saris, one shop with barred windows selling beer and whiskey, chaotic, so full of life it suggested death, too.

  "Monkey temple?" Audie said as they passed the shouters, the fires, the sign carriers, the policemen.

  "Hanuman temple," Dr. Nagaraj said.

  "How long has this mob scene been going on?"

  "Some years now."

  Beth sat stunned and heard Audie inquire in a reasonable voice, "Would you mind explaining your story? Maybe I'm stupid. But I don't get it."

  "Listen, my friend. Grandmother of Sanjeev said to me, 'Don't be sad. Garuda guided the little bird to his death unknowingly, as you guided Sanjeev. You were meant to deliver him.'"

  They continued on to Agni in silence, and at each curve in the road a little of Hanuman Nagar was lost, first the sight of it, then the sound of it, and at last even its smoke. When they entered the Agni gate, it was gone.

  "'Maybe this is your purpose in world,' she said." As soon as the car slowed down, Dr. Nagaraj began speaking. "'To guide people to their fate. You are wee-ickle.' Better we stop here."

  After Dr. Nagaraj dismissed the driver, the three walked the rest of the way up the hill. Audie asked the cost of the scarves. Dr. Nagaraj seemed relieved and mentioned the price, and he smiled as five thousand dollars was counted into his hand.

  "A great bargain, sir. And you are so lucky. This antelope is almost extinct."

  4

  The shock of the day, and her excited fear, gave her perfect recall. At yoga the next morning, during a massage—hot oil, slippery fingers—inside the pavilion, by the pool, she remembered everything. She was not able to rid herself of the images of the town of Hanuman Nagar: the cows, the bus stop, the shops, the cracks in the old walls, the paper advertisements peeling from the walls, the thick bars on the windows of the liquor store, the mocking boys like little fearless old men, the overworked women, the secretive shatoosh seller, the whole weary town held together by rusty wire and wooden braces. One oblong pothole in the street had looked to her like an open grave—she could have fitted in it.

  Most of all the confusion at the monkey temple. Audie had explained it over breakfast. A mosque had been built centuries before on the site of an ancient Hindu temple, and protesters had besieged it and reclaimed it, torn the mosque apart, and built a shrine to the monkey god. The Muslims were angry and protested the occupation, but the Hindus were defiant, chanting and stoking their fire.

  She remembered details she had only glimpsed at the time, chief among them the sight of idle monkeys scampering among the occupiers and protesters, snatching at bags, biting each other, swinging up the trees and onto the parapets of the shrine itself.

  Now, in the stillness of Agni, she believed that she could hear the loud voices from the town, the straining of car engines, music, fugitive laughter, the pinching smell of smoke. Or was that a sense of life from the other world, the sounds from the hidden place, another illusion?

  "Amazing story, eh?" Audie said.

  She stared at him. What story? was in her smile.

  "About that guy Sanjeev. The Lord of Death. Kind of an Appointment in Samarra thing."

  Beth said, "I didn't know what he was talking about. Anyway, didn't you say he was a quack?"

  "It doesn't really matter if he's a quack. He makes me feel better."

  "You said his story keeps changing."

  "I like that he could talk a dog off a meat wagon," Audie said. "And I sometimes think I'm a quack. When I was on a board, I never wanted to admit when I was wrong. Lots of times I thought: I'm a phony."

  She stared at him again, distancing herself with a smile.

  He said, "Don't you ever think that?"

  "About you?"

  "About yourself." Normally he became hot and impatient when he needed to clarify something obvious to her—she could be so slow sometimes. But he wasn't impatient now; he was sympathetic and mild.

  "Never," she said. And she thought: I have never believed I was a phony. If anything, I felt more real than anyone ever took me for. There was more to me than they realized or cared about. To those people who looked at her and thought wife or woman, she wanted to say, I am more than anything you see.

  Now it was early afternoon. She was reading by the pool, on the platform under the trees, hidd
en by a hedge from anyone who happened to be in the lounge chairs—but there was no one there, or at the pool. And Audie was at a treatment. She had ordered a lemonade and a grilled vegetable sandwich, but had only sipped at the drink and eaten just a bite of the sandwich.

  With an accompanying thump, something landed behind her, the sandwich was snatched, and she flinched, raising her arms, and saw the monkey bound away. In her instant memory it was a monkey; at the moment of muddled confrontation she had seen the thing as a hairy hostile child—like one of the mocking boys she'd seen at Hanuman Nagar—and she was too panicked to scream, though her hands were raised to protect her face and breasts.

  After leaping into the biggest of the trees, the monkey found a branch, grasped it with his feet, and began to gnaw at the sandwich, scattering vegetables. These were seized by other monkeys—six or seven—no, more, maybe a dozen, big and small, more insolent than afraid, with a malevolent patience, a defiance that she identified—just a hunch, something about the set of their jaws, the biting faces—as the courage of hunger.

  They moved toward her without a sound, scarcely seeming to touch the deck boards in their tumbling, noiseless flowing at her, their wicked faces twitching. She opened her mouth to shout but could not make a sound.

  Their hair prickled on her body, the dampness itched as it scraped at her legs. They had pinched more of the loose vegetables that had been lying on the deck, poked them into their mouths, yet kept their eyes on her.

  She knew they wanted to eat her face, push her legs apart and knock her over, squat on her breasts and stink. The stink was in the air, preceding them as they pushed toward her.

  She covered her face with one arm, flung her other arm across her breasts, and went numb from the waist down, as in a dream where she found her legs so slow as to be crippled. She wished she could scream as she saw that the monkeys, perhaps twenty of them now, were about to overwhelm her with their dirty paws and wet teeth.

  The crack of something landing in their midst—a heavy clattering stick—startled her, and the monkeys fell back. Then another stick landed with a thump, and a man hurried past Beth shouting, "Shoo! Shoo!" Holding his sandals in his hands, the man waved his arms, still shouting, physically thrusting the creatures away, into the trees, finally picking up the sticks he had thrown and flinging them again, until at last the monkeys retreated and were out of sight.

  As the man had advanced, Beth had stepped back, recovered her strength, and climbed the stairs to the apron of the pool. She found that she was out of breath, her chest tight, and panting from the simple effort of backing up. But she was still afraid.

  "Don't worry, madam," the man said—he was young, hardly a man, in white pants and a white smock, barefoot. He looked beautiful.

  Beth was choking with anxiety, unable to speak, her upper body rocking for balance.

  "They are very bold," the man said. He retrieved his sandals and slipped them on. He was smiling—lovely teeth, great confidence, not even breathing hard, not fazed at all. Audie would have been gasping.

  She made a grateful, approving sound, meant to be "thank you," but it was just a nervous exhalation.

  "You see, they have been around humans for so long they have lost their fear. They are used to being fed by hand, and others—at the temple in town—they are like little gods, spoiled children, you can say. Are you all right, madam?"

  Because she hadn't said a word.

  "Where did you come from?" Beth said, with difficulty.

  "Hanuman Nagar."

  "No, no," she said—he had misunderstood, thinking she'd asked him where he lived. She rephrased the question: "Were you watching them?"

  "I was watching you, madam."

  He faced her squarely, not smiling, looking intently at her.

  "Thank you."

  He did not blink. He said, "Since you arrived at Agni, I have not stopped watching you."

  That made her pause, and she was at a loss to reply. She had felt giddy, joyous at having been rescued from the monkeys. But now she felt awkward—unaware of the young man's gaze, she had been observed. He was forcing her to concentrate, as though this episode was not over yet, something more was required. He was hovering.

  "I don't know how to thank you," she said. "Please take this," and she went back to her bag by the chair and took out some rupees. They felt like cloth in her hand, they were so worn.

  "Oh, no, madam," the young man said, and put his hands behind his back in a prim gesture, complete with a show of dimples.

  "Isn't there anything...?"

  "Yes." He was quick. Already he had control of the situation. "You can request me."

  "Request you?"

  "For treatment," he said. "Ask for Satish."

  The slow drip of hot oil on Audie's back, the pressure and heat, suggested her fingertips, and when she drizzled the oil in widening circles it was as if she were caressing him. The brass pot was set down on the heater with a clunk and then he felt her hands. She did not say much, had only greeted him, and she hardly spoke unless he asked a direct question. Yet there was a confident intelligence in her hands as they moved down his back, a wise inquiry in the motion of her fingers. She was able by touching him to find parts of his body that, until that moment, were unknown to him, and so her insinuating hands awakened a knotted muscle, her thumb rested on it and pushed, giving it life.

  "That's nice."

  Anna paired her thumbs and pushed again, swiveling downward along the meat of his spine, gliding through the oil to the small of his back.

  "You are having this in America, sir?"

  "Doubt it."

  She went silent. Perhaps she hadn't understood his grunt. She worked harder, still on the bundles of muscles next to his spine.

  "I would like to go to America. Where is your home, sir?"

  He did not say: That's a hard question—we've got a place in Florida, an apartment in New York, a house in Maine...

  "I'm from Boston," he said. "Near Boston."

  "Boston Tea Party. Boston Red Sox. Boston beans."

  He laughed into his towel, then raised his head and asked, "Ever been outside of India?"

  "Only to Delhi, sir. School trip, sir."

  That reminded him of how young she was. He said, "You could probably make a lot of money in the States. Doing massages."

  "But also to meet people, sir. To be happy, sir. To be free, sir."

  "You're free here, aren't you?"

  "No, sir. Not free. It is very hard here for me. As I mentioned, I am Christian, sir."

  She was now working on his right arm. She had begun on his shoulder, squeezed and pressed her way to his wrist and was massaging his palm and, one by one, his fingers. Her manipulating his fingers he found to be like an act of the purest friendship, more sensual, more intimate, as she pushed and pulled, than her touch on any other part of his body. Take my hand, he thought. It meant everything.

  "Wouldn't you be afraid to be in the United States alone?"

  "Oh?" She was holding his fingers with one hand and kneading his palm with the thumb of her other hand. The way she touched him told him she was thinking. "Maybe I will find someone to look after me."

  "Give you money, you mean?"

  "I will earn it, sir."

  His throat thickened at the implications of what she said. He asked, "What would you do?"

  "I can do so many things, sir."

  "What makes you so sure?"

  "I have training, sir."

  "Lots of girls have training."

  "But my training, sir, is not in school."

  "Experience?"

  "Experience, sir. Best teacher, sir."

  "That feels nice," he said. "But can you do the hardest thing of all?"

  "What is that, sir?"

  "Keep a secret?"

  She had begun to stroke his other arm. She held it as if it were detached from his body; she weighed it and traced her fingers down his forearm to his wrist as though evaluating it. Then she caught his f
ingers and brushed them against her body, he could not tell where—her softness, her warmth, perhaps her breast or her smooth cheek.

  "Oh, yes, sir. I can do that, sir."

  He was aware that he had had this conversation many times in his life, the flirting, the allusion, the euphemism, his earliest talks with girls as a boy of twelve or thirteen, and almost fifty years on, the same innuendo, the same themes—like a language he'd learned early in life, a second language that was used exclusively between a man and woman, the language of suggestion, never quite coming to the point yet always knowing what the point was. He delighted in this inexplicit talk.

  "Sir?"

  "Yup?"

  "Please turn over, sir."

  "Not just now."

  She sighed in approval. She knew he was aroused and embarrassed. He could not turn over without exposing himself, bulging against the covering, lifting it at an angle, his conspicuous desire.

  "That is all right, sir." She was trying to be serious.

  "Give me a minute. I'm happy."

  "I want to please you, sir."

  "You're doing fine."

  "Thank you, sir." She leaned against his back as though embracing him, but using her elbow, her forearm, her fists on his packed muscles. She was canted over him, resting on him, her breath warming his shoulders and neck. Because he was faced away from her she seemed bolder, and what aroused him again was his suspicion that she knew the effect she was having on him.

  "Did you learn that in school?"

  She did not hesitate, she pressed harder, her whole body upon him.

  "No, sir." He could tell she was smiling. "In life, sir."

  For a few days, Audie and Beth found reasons to be busy, to remain apart at the very time when, a week earlier, they would have been punctually together, looking at Agni and its people—guests and staff—and agreeing with each other: at the pool, in the restaurant, in their suite, at yoga, awaiting a treatment, poking golf balls across the putting green, side by side.